How to Write a Defence to a County Court Claim (Form N9B)

An envelope arrived, and inside it a claim form saying you owe money. Your first thought was probably that you have fourteen days and no idea what to do. Writing a defence to a county court claim is more manageable than it looks, and you almost certainly have more time available than the form suggests. This guide explains how to get that time, what the form actually asks for, and what separates a defence that works from one that falls apart.

Take the deadline seriously. Nearly everything else here can be fixed later.

Which form do you need?

Your response pack contains several forms, and people often fill in the wrong one. Which you need depends entirely on what you want to say.

If you want to	Use form
Admit the claim and offer to pay	N9A
Dispute all or part of the claim	N9B
Buy yourself more time before deciding	N9

This guide covers the N9B. If you are still working out where you stand, our guide on being served with a county court claim covers those first few days, including how the court works out when you were served.

You probably have longer than fourteen days

The starting deadline is fourteen days from when the particulars of claim were served on you. That comes from rule 15.4 of the Civil Procedure Rules. Most people read that and panic. What they miss is that there are two straightforward ways to extend it.

The first is the acknowledgment of service, form N9. File it inside the original fourteen days and your defence deadline automatically moves to twenty-eight days from service. You do not need permission and you do not need a reason. It is a short form that takes a few minutes, and filing it costs you nothing.

The second is asking the claimant. Rule 15.5 allows both sides to agree a further extension of up to twenty-eight days. Write to them, ask, and if they say yes you must then tell the court in writing yourself. Do not assume the claimant will do it for you. Plenty of claimants agree to this, partly because refusing gains them very little and looks unreasonable to a judge later on.

Do both and your fortnight becomes almost two months. That is usually enough time to gather documents and think clearly.

What happens if you ignore it

Nothing good, and it happens quickly. The claimant applies for judgment in default, which the court can grant without any hearing and without ever looking at whether the claim was правильная. You end up with a county court judgment recorded against you, sitting on the public register for six years, harming your credit, and open to enforcement through bailiffs, deductions from your wages, or a charge over your home.

Undoing a default judgment afterwards is possible. It needs a formal application, a fee, and a persuasive explanation of why you missed the deadline. Filing something on time is very much the easier path.

How to write a defence to a county court claim

Download the current form, dated 05.24, from the court forms collection on gov.uk. Start by copying the court name, the claim number and the party names exactly as they appear on the claim form you received. Court staff cannot locate your case without those, and getting them wrong causes delays you do not need.

The form runs in five short sections. Section one asks how much of the claim you dispute. If you dispute the whole thing, tick that box and move on. If you accept part of it, you have to deal with the part you accept, either by paying it or by enclosing a completed N9A admission form. Leaving the admitted portion unresolved is not an option the court will accept.

Section two is narrow. It applies only where you already paid the money before the claim was issued. If that is your situation, give the amount, the date, and how you paid it, and keep your bank statements to hand.

Section three is the defence itself, and it is the part that matters. There is more on it in the next heading.

Section four is for a counterclaim, which you complete only if the claimant owes you money too. Section five is the statement of truth, which you sign yourself. The wording on that page carries a contempt of court warning, and it is not decorative. Never sign a version of events you do not actually believe. Finally, give an address you genuinely check, because every future document in the case will be sent there.

Writing the defence itself

The rules on what a defence must contain sit in rule 16.5, and they are simpler than they sound. Read the claimant’s particulars of claim paragraph by paragraph. For each thing they say, you need to do one of three things.

You can admit it, if it is true. You can deny it, in which case you must say why and give your own account of what happened. Or you can say that you cannot admit or deny it, and require the claimant to prove it. That third option is perfectly proper and badly underused. Where the claimant asserts something you have no way of knowing about, saying so is the honest and correct answer.

Here is the part that catches people out. If you say nothing at all about an allegation, the court can treat you as having admitted it. Silence works against you. So deal with every point they raise, even if only in a sentence.

Structure helps enormously. Number your paragraphs, and where you can, make your paragraph four answer their paragraph four. Keep each paragraph to a single issue. Write short factual sentences. If the box on the form is too small, continue on a separate sheet with the claim number written at the top of every page.

Some defences are lost forever if you do not raise them in writing at this stage. Limitation is the clearest example. If the six year period expired before the claim was issued, you must say so in your defence, because no judge will raise it on your behalf. Other defences worth stating plainly include that you already paid, that the goods or work were defective, that no contract ever existed, that the amount claimed is simply wrong, or that the claimant has come after the wrong person entirely.

Three things weaken a defence more than anything else. Denying everything without explaining why persuades nobody. Long accounts of how badly you have been treated do not belong in a court document, however true they are. And emotion reads very poorly on paper, because judges see a great deal of it and it tells them nothing about the facts. Dates, documents and specifics are what carry weight.

Should you counterclaim?

Think about it if the same dispute left you out of pocket. The classic example is a builder suing for an unpaid balance while you have paid someone else to put the work right. Your counterclaim for that cost gets decided alongside their claim, in the same case, at the same hearing.

Two practical points. A counterclaim carries a court fee, worked out on the same scale as issuing a claim, so budget for it. And be honest with yourself about its strength, because a thin counterclaim bolted on for leverage tends to come apart under questioning. If you do counterclaim, our guide on how to fill in the N1 claim form explains how to set out a claim properly, and the same approach applies to section four of the N9B.

What happens after you file

Send a copy of your defence to every other party in the case. The court will not do this for you.

Your case is now formally contested. Within a few weeks you should expect a directions questionnaire, followed by the court allocating the case to a track and setting a timetable. For money claims of £10,000 or less there will also be a mediation appointment, and attending it is compulsory rather than optional. Our guide on making a small claim sets out how that timeline runs, and it works the same way from either side of the case.

Filing a defence does not mean you are committed to a day in court. A large proportion of defended claims settle well before that.

Where we come in

We are a paralegal service for litigants in person, and we are clear about the role. We are not solicitors and we do not conduct litigation. Nothing goes on the court record in our name. You sign the statement of truth and you file the form, because the court requires that to be you and nobody else.

What we prepare is the defence itself. That means working through the particulars of claim allegation by allegation, deciding what you admit, what you deny and what the claimant should be put to proof on, spotting the legal defences that have to be raised now or lost, and setting the whole thing out in numbered paragraphs a judge can follow without effort. Defence drafting is £159, fixed, and court-ready.

If your deadline is close, tell us the date you were served before anything else. Getting an acknowledgment of service filed today may matter more than any other step.

See our fixed fees or get in touch.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)